We always focus on the downsides of super intelligent AI. There are, however, upsides. Super intelligence can help solve some of the biggest problems of our time: Safety, medical issues, justice, etc.

Containment is both a technical and a moral issue. Much more difficult than currently given credit for. Given ways we have to construct it, we likely can just “unplug” it.

Tegmark defines these three stages of life:

Life 1.0: Both hardware and software determined by evolution. (Flagella)

Life 2.0: Hardware determined by evolution, software can be learned (Humans)

Life 3.0: Both hardware and software can be changed at will. (AI machines)

Wide vs narrow intelligence: Humans have wide intelligence. Generally good a lot a lot of different tasks and can learn a lot implicitly. Computers have (so far) with narrow intelligence. They can calculate and do programmed tasks much better than us. But will completely fail at needing to account for unwritten constraints when someone says, “take me to the airport as fast as possible.”

The moment the top narrow intelligence gets knit together and meets the minimum of general intelligence, it will likely surpass human intelligence.

What makes us intelligent is the pattern in which the hardware is arranged. Not the building blocks themselves.

The software isn’t aware of the hardware. Our bodies are completely different from when we were young, but we feel like the same person.

The question of consciousness is key. A subjective experience depends on it.

We probably already have the hardware to get human-level general intelligence. What we are missing is the software. It is unlikely to be the same architecture as the human brain, likely similar. (Planes are much more simple than birds.)

AI Safety research needs to go hand-in-hand with AI research. How do we make computers unhackable? How do we contain it in development? How do we ensure system stability?

One further issue you are going to need to overcome is having computers answer how a decision was made in an understandable way instead of just dumping a stack trace.

Tegmark councils his own kids to go into fields that computers are bad at. Fields where people pay a premium for them to be done by Humans.

“It’ll-get-worse-before-it-gets-better” fallacy: A variant of confirmation bias. If the problem gets worse, the prediction is confirmed. If the situation improves unexpectedly, the customer is happy and the expert attributes it to his prowess. Look for verifiable cause-and-effect evidence instead.

Story bias: We tend to interpret things with meaning, especially things that seem connected. Stories are more interesting than details. Our lives are mostly series of unconnected, unplanned events and experiences. Looking at these ex post facto and making up an overarching narrative is disingenuous. The problem with stories is that they give us a false sense of understanding, which leads us to take bigger risks and urges us to take a stroll on thin ice. Whenever you hear a story, ask: Who is the sender, what are his intentions, and what does this story leave out or gloss over?

Hindsight bias: Possibly a variant on story bias. In retrospect, everything seems clear and inevitable. It makes us think we are better predictors than we actually are, causing us to be arrogant about our knowledge and take too much risk. To combat this, read diaries, listen to oral histories, and read news stories from the time you are looking at. Check out predictions from the time. And keep your own journal with your own predictions about your life, career, and current events. Compare them later to what happened to see how poor of a predictor we all are.

Overconfidence effect: We systematically overestimate and our ability to predict on a massive scale. The difference between what we know and what we think we know is huge. Be aware that you tend to overestimate your knowledge. Be skeptical of predictions, especially from so-called experts. With all plans, favor the pessimistic scenario.

Chauffeur Knowledge: There are two types of knowledge: Real knowledge (deep, nuanced understanding) and Chauffeur knowledge (enough knowledge to put on a show, but understanding to answer questions or make connections). Distinguishing between the two is difficult if you don’t understand the topics yourself. One method is the circle of competence. True experts understand the limits of their competence: The perimeter of what they do and do not know. They are more likely to say “I don’t know.” The chauffeurs are unlikely to do this.

Illusion of Control: Similar to placebo effect. The tendency to believe that we can influence something over which we have absolutely no sway. Sports, gambling, etc. Also: Elevators, cross walks, fake temperature dials. This illusion led prisoners (like Frankel, Solzhenitsyn, etc) to not give up hope in concentration camps. Federal reserve’s federal funds rate is probably a fake dial, too. The world is mostly an uncontrollable system at the level we currently understand it. The things we can influence are very few.

Incentive Super-Response Tendency: People respond to incentives by doing whatever is in their best interest. Extreme examples: Hanoi rats being bred, Dead Sea scrolls being torn apart. Good incentive systems take into account both intent and reward. Poor incentive systems often overlook and even corrupt the underlying aim. “Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.” Try to ascertain what actions are incentivized in any situation.

Regression to Mean: A cousin of the “It’ll-get-worse-before-it-gets-better” and the Illusion of Control fallacies. Extreme performances are often interspersed with less extreme ones. There are natural variations in performance. Students are rarely always high or low performers. They cluster around the mean. Thinking we can influence these high and low performers is an illusion of control.

Outcome Bias: We tend to evaluate decisions based on the result rather than the decision process. This is a variant on the Hindsight Bias. Only in retrospect do signals seem clear. When samples are too small, the results are meaningless. A bad result does not necessary indicate a bad decision and vice versa. Focus on the reasons behind actions: Were they rational and understandable?

Paradox of Choice: A large selection leads to inner paralysis and also poorer decisions. Think about what you want before inspecting existing offers. Write down the criteria and stick to them rigidly. There are never perfect decisions. Learn to love a good choice.

Liking Bias: The more we like someone, the more we are inclined to but from or help that person. We see people as pleasant if (a) they are outwardly attractive, (b) they are similar to you, or (3) they like you. This is why the salesperson copies body language and why multi-level marketing schemes work. Advertising employs likable figures in ads. If you are a salesperson, make people like you. If you are a consumer, judge the product independent of the seller and pretend you don’t like the seller.

Endowment effect: We consider things to be more valuable the moment we own them. If we are selling something, we charge more than we ourselves would spend on it. We are better at holding on to things than getting rid of them. This effect works on auction participants, too, which drives up bidding. And late-stage interview rejections. Don’t cling to things, rather view them as the universe temporarily bestowing them to you.

TK Coleman, my coworker on the education team at Praxis, told his career journey story in two parts on the Isaac Morehouse podcast. It is worth a listen:

I’ve heard many parts of this story through working with TK, but I hadn’t heard the entire thing laid out. I immensely respected TK before listening to this, but hearing his early story just added to it further. Here are a few things from these shows that I find admirable:

TK’s complete dedication to topics.

How he unapologetically structures his life around his top priorities.

How humble he is. He knows so much more than he lets on. The last time he stayed with Amanda and me, I assumed that he knew very little about cocktails because he didn’t drink and never hinted at knowing about cocktails when I talked about them. In this show I learned that he was a professional bartender for a while and dove into bartending with the same intensity that he dives into everything else. He is this way about everything. He knows so much, be he never flaunts it. He approaches everything as a learning opportunity and doesn’t let his current knowledge get in the way of learning something new. He told me that one of his pet peeves is that people prefer to talk instead of listen, so he tries his best to avoid that.

He isn’t afraid to admit that he was scared and that stopped him from going to Hollywood at first. He always seems confident and fearless, so hearing this makes him seem more real. And even better.

Here are some of my takeaways from the two shows:

It is okay to stick with a few things and do them seriously for a few years and then decide to move on to something else. Just don’t treat those two years as a half-hearted effort. Go all-in. You don’t need a grand life plan early in your career. When I think that the place I’m currently at in life is a huge deal, remember that there are multiple parts of TK’s story where he made something his life for two years, moved on, and now it barely comes up unless someone asks.

Don’t celebrate or call your Mom until the check clears

If your startup has a significant tech component, bring on a tech cofounder. Don’t rely on contractors for a core product.

Never take money from someone unless you know they can lose it and be okay with it

Never take money out of a place of desperation or powerlessness. Walk away.

Doing something that you don’t need permission to do is the ultimate expression of power.

When you are working for free or cheap, the expectations are low. It is easy to blow people away. When you get brought on full time, now all the things that were impressive before are expected.

Leave things in a way that allows you to come back in the future.

The best path forward is doing whatever you are doing now fully and with integrity.

I’m working my way through Rolf Dobelli’s The Art of Thinking Clearly by reading a few sections each morning. Here are my notes on the first 11 sections (Confirmation Bias had two sections, which I’ve only noted as one below):

Survivorship bias: You overestimate your probability of success because you only see success stories. You find common threads in success stories and think they are the answer. Both ignore the failures because those stories aren’t told. When you are a survivor you think, “I did it! Everyone else can!” Look for counter examples and failures to overcome it.

Swimmer’s body illusion: Swimmers usually choose swimming because they have good physiques. Swimming doesn’t necessarily cause good physiques. Harvard has a rigorous vetting process and skilled, driven people tend to get in. They’d likely be successful without Harvard. This may actually be a subset of the survivorship bias. (You don’t see ugly models selling makeup or fat swimmers because they don’t tend to last long in the business. Dumb people don’t make it though Harvard’s screening, so won’t bring down their salary numbers after 4 years.)

Clustering illusion: Our brains are pattern and meaning recognizing machines. First regard patterns as pure chance. If there seems to be more, test it statistically.

Social Proof: We are hardwired to copy the reactions of others. In the past it was beneficial for survival. Remember to look for links. Popular does not equal best on objective measures. “If 50M people say something foolish, it is still foolish.”

Sunk Cost Fallacy: Investments of time or money to date don’t matter. Only future benefits or costs count.

Reciprocity: The allure of both positive and negative reciprocity is so strong that it is best to avoid saying yes in the first place if it is something you don’t want.

Confirmation bias: The tendency to interpret new information so it becomes compatible with your existing beliefs. We filter out disconfirming evidence. Look for disconfirming evidence and give it serious consideration. “Murder your darlings.”

Authority bias: When making decisions, think about which authority figures are influencing your reasoning. Challenge them.

Contrast Effect: Things seem cheaper, prettier, healthier, better, etc in contrast to something else. This is how magicians and con men remove your watch: Press hard in one area so you don’t feel the lighter touch of removing your watch. This is also why it is easy to ignore inflation. Compare things in individual cost/benefit calculations, not in contrast to an “original price” or what they are framed against.

Availability bias: We create a picture of the world using the examples that most easily come to mind. This creates an incorrect risk map in our heads. We attach too much likelihood to flashy outcomes. We think dramatically, not quantitatively. We tend to focus on what is in front of us, whether or not it is the most important question. We can overcome it by getting others’ input with different experiences and expertise.

If you write React in plain javascript, everything should run as-is. If you write your React code in JSX, babel first finds the JSX, parses and generates the corresponding javascript code, then evaluates it. The big-picture of React is that it is kind of like the view layer in MVC, with a few more bells and whistles added. Everything renders to a virtual DOM first, which is significantly faster than the real DOM. Changes are then compared with the real DOM and then the differences are sent to the real DOM.

It looks like you can write Angular code in javascript or Typescript (which then compiles to javascript). Here is a great high-level architecture overview of Angular that explains how it works: https://angular.io/guide/architecture

Tristan is a former Design Ethicist at Google and studied at Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab. His work highlights the design patterns in technology that grab our attention, pull us back in, and addict us. These designs are not only manipulating us, but they are making us unhappy.

I’m getting increasingly interested in this topic. Taking a long break from social media, turning off almost all phone notifications, and deleting all addictive apps from my phone has had a positive impact on my reading & thinking time. Breaking the typical pattern of waking up and surfing social media before getting moving for the day has made my mornings better, too.

Two related topics I’m interested in pursuing:

Decreasing my cognitive load. Getting things off my mind so I can focus on what matters.

Making myself less susceptible to advertising.

If you have any books, articles, or podcasts I should check out on these topics, let me know!

I’m very torn on jury duty. I despise politics, I don’t vote, I rarely follow the news, and I think that most laws should be nullified. I’d prefer to be rid of the whole business.

On the other hand, I deeply believe in justice and want reasonable, thoughtful people on juries.

I’ve so far avoided jury duty by being out of state at college when I was summoned. My plan if I ever got called again was to say some radical thing in order to get kicked out of the selection pool. That is no longer my plan. Now I think that I have an obligation to be the thoughtful, reasonable juror that I’d want if I were on trial.

The back order is a real bummer. I bought these the same day I bought the 10.5” iPad Pro, but I had to wait a month and a half to get them. Two days after getting them, Amanda tried them out and loved them, so I ordered another pair for her. Those don’t ship until some time in September.

The inside of the beautiful white case had dust in it when I opened it up for the first time. Not ideal, but I bet they are just cranking them out as fast as possible to fill demand.

I first thought that one of the plastic seams on my right bud was misaligned. It isn’t exactly the same as the seam on the left. But the more I look at the renderings, the more I think there is supposed to be a ridge there, so I’m note sure.

Using them

I’ve used them for podcasts, audio books, music, phone calls, and video chats.

The battery life is good enough for me and I just diligently pop them back in their case (and plug it in) when not using them. I work from home, so I don’t wear headphones all day. If you need to wear headphones all day, the battery life might not be up to par yet.

They are great for workouts and walks. I’ve done a few Starting Strength workouts with them and Amanda went for a run with them and they stayed in without an issue.

They are so much more comfortable than the wired earbuds that come with the iPhone by default. They look similar, but you can wear these for hours without discomfort.

Tapping twice for Siri works well, as does pulling one out for pausing.

Siri’s control of third-party apps like Overcast and Audible is still lacking. I liked that Overcast was able to hijack the control buttons on the wired headphones to fast forward or rewind. If there are special voice commands for this that I haven’t figured out yet, please drop me a line.

Sound & Sync

The sound quality is pretty good, or at least it is good enough that I can’t notice anything negative about them. I’m not an audiophile, but I can definitely tell crappy sound from good sound and these make the cut.

Connecting them to other devices is super easy. Flip open the top on the case, tap the button on the back, and tap the button on your closest device. I also thought it was interesting that I tried to pair them with Amanda’s iPhone by going to the Bluetooth settings after pairing them with mine and I got a message on-screen saying that these are paired with someone else’s phone and I’d need to pair them using the case. It is good to know that someone on the train can’t hijack my audio.

During about 15 hours of listening over the past week, I noticed temporary sound glitches about 5 times. Each time the phone was in my pocket, so it wasn’t a distance issue. It must have been either a sync issue or some sort of interference. None of these lasted for more than a second, but it was enough to be noticeable. Still, this is better than every other Bluetooth headphones I’ve tried. I’m willing to overlook it given their convenience.

I’d love if these could adjust volume to compensate for ambient sounds. Walking by loud areas like construction sites or having semis/busses roll by sometimes drowns out the sound entirely.

Overall

They are very good, but they aren’t perfect. I suspect that v2 is going to be amazing whenever it comes out.

They are ultra portable, so I don’t think twice about tossing them in my Tom Bihn Small Cafe Bag whenever I go somewhere. Before these, I’d have to choose between wired headphones or my heavier backpack if I wanted my wireless noise canceling headphones.

Even though I love noise canceling headphones while on planes, I’m going to take these on a trip next week instead of the larger set to see how it goes. The portability tradeoff is too enticing. I like traveling light.

Despite the few audio glitches and inability to drown out ambient sounds, these are now my daily use headphones.

Isaac, Praxis’s founder and CEO, had me do an exercise today that helped me clarify what the education part of our product is and how we expect customers to use it.

Think about what you do at your job, why you do it, and how you do it. Or even better, what your company’s product or service is, what need you are trying to fill, and how your product fills that need. If you are a department head or team manager, focus on what your team does, why and how you do it, and how it fits into the overall company. Turn this into a 5 minute video.

It took me a few hours of thinking about it over an evening and the next morning, then 3 different takes:

First cut, 10 minutes long, awkward phrasing as I figured out what I wanted to say.

A tighter 6.5 minute version with two areas that were solid and one area that was too detailed in some areas and too light in others.

A third and final take that was 4.5 minutes long that was clearer in almost every way. The only thing I’d add if I chose to shoot it one more time is a better 20 second conceptual framing of our why at the beginning. It was sprinkled throughout, but not laid out in one statement.

This helps you take a 10,000ft view of what you do, figure out your part in the organization, learn how to present your role in a coherent way, and figure out where you need to do some work.

Methods of thinking are more important than raw intelligence. The people who were burning witches probably didn’t have a lower IQ than the people who went to the moon. They thought about the world in a different way.

Bullshit and lying aren’t the same. Bullshit may contain lies, but the purpose is different. Lies intentionally deceive, but bullshit’s goal is impressing the listener.

Falling for bullshit isn’t a good indicator for someone’s intelligence.

People may fall for bullshit for non-obvious reasons, such as reading too far into it or projecting their own beliefs onto it.

I bought the 10.5” iPad Pro the day it was announced and received it the following Monday. My old Gen 3 iPad didn’t support multitasking, Touch ID, iOS 10, or True Tone. Basically nothing that makes an iPad awesome for work. It was getting pretty slow and desperately needed an upgrade. I’m super happy with the new iPad Pro. Here’s what I love about it after the first three weeks of use:

It is really snappy. I mean really snappy. Even faster than the previous generation.

Multitasking and split view is wonderful. I take notes while reading, do research while chatting with my coworkers on Slack or answering questions on Facebook Workplace, grab links while I write blog posts, and pop out videos to watch while I open brainstorm in another document.

Using Touch ID to unlock my iPad and authenticate 1Password on it really speeds things up. I didn’t realize how much I used it until I switched back to my old iPad and went without it for a bit.

The Smart Keyboard is very easy to type on. It took all of an hour to adapt to. I love it.

True Tone makes it possible to use this screen outside, even in the sun. I’m sitting out at a park right now writing this. As someone who works from home, this is a game changer. I now work outside for multiple hours each day, weather permitting. My old iPad and my MacBook Pro are almost unusable outside.

Swift Playgrounds is a fun little puzzle game when I need a distraction.

The speakers in this are great. They blow my previous iPad out of the water.

iOS 11 (I’m on Public Beta 1) really does make iOS easier to navigate and use. The new task switcher screen, control center, and dock make flipping between apps and navigating around the system a breeze.

Taking screenshots and being able to mark them up or use them immediately is super useful.

The slide down for numbers/symbols on the on-screen keyboard is very intuitive and easy to use. That said, I primarily use the Smart Keyboard.

I love the trade off between portability and how much I can get done on this device. The Tom Bihn Small Cafe Bag fits it perfectly with enough room for an Anker battery pack, a notebook, my Kindle, and my keys. This setup is an order of magnitude lighter than my backpack and MacBook Pro, making walking around town and finding a place to work easy and sweat-free.

iOS 11 is pretty sweet. That said, Public Beta 1 is still pretty buggy. Apps crash a lot when launching and closing split view, the multi file selection is really buggy and doesn’t really work on springboard yet, sometimes I can’t get split view to launch, launching Notes from the lock screen with the Apple Pencil doesn’t always work for me, and I’ve had to reboot my iPad a few times because it became unresponsive. I can’t get TextExpander to work with the Smart Keyboard yet, which is annoying. iOS 11 is also a huge battery hog. I’ve been using my iPad for three and a half hours this morning and I’ve drained 61% of my battery in that time. I’m sure it will get better over time.

I don’t use the Apple Pencil as much as I thought I would. It is super fast on the screen with the recent updates. I plan on taking a course on Procreate soon, which might spur more Apple Pencil usage. I was really excited to use Paper by 53’s diagramming features, but the shape recognition and Apple Pencil calibration severely lacking. Linea is awesome, but I just don’t draw very much. Perhaps that will change over time. The handwriting recognition in Notes is pretty good all things considered, but my handwriting sucks, so I prefer to type.

I could work on the iPad most of the day. There are still a few things I find it easier to do on macOS, but the list is much shorter than on my old iPad. The tasks I’ve had to switch back to my MacBook Pro for are:

File conversion. I had to convert a bunch of videos from MOV to MP4 for a coworker. There is probably an app or Workflow out there to do this, but downloading and manipulating a bunch of 500MB+ files is just faster and easier on macOS connected to Ethernet.

Local web development. I prefer to develop in a virtual machine powered by Homestead. There is just no iOS equivalent right now. This isn’t a dealbreaker because I have options: Connect to a remote server and use Coda to pull down files, edit them, and push them back up to test. Or I could set up a system to remote into my home computer. These are fine for hot fixes, but spending a few hours working on and testing updates is just easier on my Mac with the second 27” screen and full local environment.

Meetings. Regular meetings are fine on the iPad with apps like Hangouts and Zoom, but there are two big things missing: Screen sharing and splitview while on video. If I could take notes or look at documents in splitview while on video, I’d probably do 3/4 of my meetings from my iPad. Currently, I prefer to use my Mac so that I can open multiple docs and share my screen during meetings.

Updating my Jekyll site. There are a few hacky workarounds people have made to kick off Jekyll builds from iOS using git repos, but my build and deploy system is super smooth on my Mac. I’ll probably just write posts in markdown on iA Writer on my iPad, then just switch over to my Mac to build and deploy. That said, I’m probably going to switch my site back over to WordPress again soon anyway.

Creating, editing, and using CSVs to move data around. I export a decent amount of stuff from our CRM to use in other systems. I almost always have to manipulate the CSVs first with bulk find and replaces before uploading. I could probably hack something together with Pythonista, Workflows, and regex if I needed to, but I prefer to just use my Mac.

What all of these things come down to is that I prefer my Mac for these particular tasks, but I’m not chained to it. I’m completely fine traveling with just my iPad for a few days. But if I’m gone for more than a few days, I’ll take my MacBook Pro. As-is, my Mac usage has dropped by at least half most days, some days more than that.

I read this article from The Guardian about an ophthalmologist who is spending his retirement living out of a backpack and hiking all around the US. Most of it is only mildly interesting, but I loved this part:

The next night, we slept in a copse of gnarled oaks beside a graveyard, a shady grove carpeted with slender, rippling leaves. It was strangely lovely. Eberhart found them everywhere, these forgotten little shards of wilderness. The problem, he said, was that hikers tended to divide their lives into compartments: wilderness over here, civilization over there. “The walls that exist between each of these compartments are not there naturally,” he said. “We create them. The guy that has to stand there and look at Mount Olympus to find peace and quiet and solitude and meaning – life has escaped him totally!”’

I’ve found that it is very important for my well-being to seek out and spend time in this urban wilderness. I live in Yonkers, which isn’t nearly as dense as most parts of NYC, but life here is still dominated by apartments and concrete. For someone who grew up where houses, yards, and trees are the norm, finding these little places are necessary.

I’ve found three great refuges within walking distance of my apartment. I’m writing this post on my iPad from one of them right now. I like to go for a walk at least once a day and 4/5 days per week (weather permitting) I work outside from one of these spots. Working these places into my daily life greatly improves my well-being.

While I’m not physically more than 50-100 yards from the street, the feel is completely different. Green replaces grey, the smell of grass and trees replace the smell of trash and exhaust fumes, and the sound of birds chirping replaces the sound of car engines.

For times when you need to get away from the city completely, there are tons of great hiking spots within an hour’s drive of NYC: The Palisades, Bear Mountain, Doodletown, Breakneck Ridge, Anthony’s Nose, and Ramapo Lake to name a few. You can even reach a section of the Appalachian Trail by Metro North.

I was having trouble connecting to my Karma Go device on my iPad. Wasn’t auto connecting to the website to authenticate. So I tried the old http://192.168.1.1 trick (happened to be the device’s IP) and it worked!